The secrets of the chess.., p.24
The Secrets of the Chess Machine, page 24
Friedrich Knaus was lurking among the spectators too, trying not to stand out as the man famous for being the Turk’s first victim, but he also wanted to see the chess machine in the hope of finding out at long last how it worked. Jakob noticed him and whispered to Kempelen, whereupon the Hungarian went briskly up to him and gave him a friendly handshake.
‘How good that you are delighting us with your presence a second time,’ said Kempelen. ‘Or did the Empress command you to be here?’
‘Oh, no, I’m here of my own free will,’ replied Knaus, with a sweet smile. ‘Why would I want to miss an appearance by your chess machine, as you call it? Let us hope that its predictable triumph will not anger the Empress too much.’
Meanwhile, everything had been set up. When the Empress saw the separate chess table, she protested, ‘I want to face the Turk, just as Knaus did.’
‘But Your Majesty, the automaton is not entirely…’
‘Not entirely safe? Oh, let’s have none ofthat, c’est ridicule. You surely don’t believe that this good Turk of yours really threw the unfortunate veuve Jesenak out of a window recently?’
As usual, the performance began with the display of the empty cabinet. After all the doors had been closed again, Kempelen took a candle and once again looked in at the door where Tibor sat, so that he could light Tibor’s candle out of sight of the spectators. Then he closed that door too. Normally, Kempelen would have placed his own candle on the chess cabinet, but out here in the blazing sun there was no need for one, so he blew it out.
The Empress sat down at the table. A servant moved her chair in, a second took up his position behind her with a parasol and a third handed her her spectacles.
‘Now let us see if this Mohammedan can defeat a Christian woman!’
Kempelen wound up the clockwork and took off the latch. Then he stationed himself beside the table with the little casket containing his tools. As confidently as ever, the Turk moved his knight forward. Maria Theresia put on her spectacles to examine the move and then moved her own knight. There was applause at this point, mainly from those of the spectators who had not seen the chess automaton in action before, but the Empress immediately looked round and quelled it. ‘That was no great achievement, I assure you. Or if so, only because of this extraordinary heat.’
True enough; Tibor couldn’t remember ever having sweated so much in his life. Once the automaton was out in the garden, he had poured some of the water in the cabinet with him over his shirt to cool himself. But he had just been wasting drinking water, for by now he was drenched anyway. His clothes clung to his skin; even the felt and the wood below him were damp. He didn’t have enough room to wipe the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and instead had to do it with his hands, trying to rub them dry on his shirt. When he bent over his own chessboard, salty droplets fell on the chessmen. Tibor felt as if he had swollen in the heat, had risen like dough or iron; he was bumping into corners that he had never touched before, and his bent back ached. There were so many wheels going round beside him; why had they never managed to install a wheel with a fan on it, something to blow a cool breeze into the stagnant air inside the automaton? Although perhaps then the candle would have gone out, and the candle was the most important part of his equipment. Its flame didn’t seem to Tibor much hotter than the surroundings. He could hardly smell the smoke; his own sweat and even the strong smell of the sun-baked wood overpowered it. Tibor felt as if beetles or ants had got into the machine with him and were crawling over the back of his neck and through his hair, but it was only drops of sweat. The sweat ran into Tibor’s mouth without quenching his thirst, it burned his eyes and particularly his wound, for his bandages had been soaked first of all. The hole in his right breast was thudding like a second heart. His entire right arm tingled. It had obviously gone to sleep, and his fingertips were already numb. Tibor couldn’t tell whether that was because of his wound or the awkward position he had adopted to spare his injured chest muscle. But moving the pantograph was a laborious business. Tibor had to take care that its grip did not slip from his sweating hand with a move only half-performed. He wanted to use his left hand to take the burden off the right hand, but he had never practised doing that, and the one move he did manage left-handed was jerky and uncertain. But he wasn’t going to complain of his injury: the gunshot wound seemed to him an appropriate, almost welcome punishment for the murder he had committed. After all, on the eye-for-an-eye principle the bullet could have shattered his head. The cylinder that it had touched before burying itself in his body was turning beside Tibor, and the little dent in the brass regularly moved down, disappeared and re-emerged. Then it stopped. The clockwork had run down.
Tibor waited. It was time to wind the springs up again. The game against the Empress would earn him Kempelen’s profound respect: playing against the most powerful woman in Europe in these circumstances, with a bullet wound in his chest, and winning easily – without a shadow of doubt, that would be a unique achievement.
‘We might think your Turk was feeling the heat too,’ said Maria Theresia, as Jakob wound up the clockwork again beside her. ‘Its movements seem strangely sluggish. Yet it should be accustomed to such temperatures in its native land, n’est-cepas?’
‘It’s possible that the heat has distorted the metal inside it.’
‘So even machines have human weaknesses?’ replied the Empress, smiling, and she returned her attention to the game.
Kempelen glanced at Joseph, who was now devoting more and more time to talking to von Haugwitz, and not, as Kempelen suspected, solely about the chess automaton. Moreover, Joseph was not the only one whose attention was elsewhere. Kempelen resolved never again to stage performances by the Turk out of doors.
Meanwhile, Maria Theresia had seen the entry hole of the bullet in the door of the cabinet to her left. ‘What happened there?’ she asked. ‘Do you have mice?’ And before Kempelen could embark on an explanation, the Empress put her little finger into the hole. ‘Or is it an air-hole for the clockwork?’
Tibor saw the felt bulging in through the wheels; then the little seam split, and he could see the entire finger – a pink worm wriggling as it explored its new surroundings. In panic, Tibor’s hand shot out to shield the light of the candle, an unnecessary precaution, since the finger had no eyes. When his hands came close to the candle, pain stabbed through his injured chest. Tibor’s hand jerked and accidentally pressed the candle flame down into the wax, where it was immediately extinguished with a soft hiss. Everything went dark.
‘Please, Your Majesty, be careful! Don’t catch your finger between the wheels!’
At Kempelen’s warning, the Empress took her finger out of the hole again. The torn felt came together behind it.
A man deep in a cave whose only torch has just gone out could not have felt more desperate than Tibor did now. The dwarf forced his panic down: after all, he and Kempelen had worked out a plan for just such an eventuality. If his candle went out, for any reason at all, Tibor had only to make the Turk roll its eyes. That signal would tell Kempelen that he must look inside the mechanism and find some excuse to light Tibor’s candle again. In the dark, Tibor reached for the wires moving the eyes and pulled them. The Turk rolled its glass eyes until only their whites showed.
A murmur ran through the audience. ‘Isn’t your Mussulman well?’ asked the Empress.
Kempelen stepped forward to look at the android. The signal was clear, but he had blown his own candle out. There wasn’t an open flame in sight. He had no way of helping Tibor.
‘It’s only thinking,’ explained Kempelen. ‘It will soon play on. Just make your move, Your Imperial Highness.’
The Empress made her move. Above him, Tibor heard the two magnets being drawn up and dropped again, but he couldn’t see them. He raised his right hand to the underside of the board, his chest hurt as he felt for the magnets, but among all the nails and little iron discs, he lost his bearings. He touched a cogwheel that pinched his upper arm and lowered his arm again. Very well, so Kempelen wouldn’t be helping him. It will soon play on. That was an order to Tibor to bring the game to an end, whatever happened. He closed his eyes – a purely formal gesture, for it was pitch dark anyway – and recalled the state of the game to his mind. The Empress’s bishop had been threatened by one of his pawns, so it followed that she must have moved the bishop back to one of the two safe squares. But which of them? Tibor decided on the one further back. That was how he would have played. He felt for the chessmen on his own board – cautiously, to avoid another misfortune like the snuffing of the candle flame – picked up the red bishop and put it on the corresponding square. He couldn’t play blind, but he didn’t have to, or not completely blind: he would simply feel the pieces and the state of the game. Next he made his own move, aggressively advancing his queen, for if there was one thing he wanted it was to bring this game to a rapid end. He had made a good enough start; the Empress couldn’t endanger him now. He operated the pantograph perfectly. His heartbeat slowed down. Was it cooler in the machine without the candle? Whether it was or not, the sounds seemed to him louder now that he couldn’t see: the mechanism, the murmuring of the spectators, the gravel crunching under every footstep, even the Empress’s quietly wheezing breath where she sat not three feet away from him.
The game went on. After the Empress’s next move and those that followed, he felt for the little metal discs, and this time, keeping calm, he could deduce the state of play from them. He took one of the Empress’s unprotected knights. Four moves at the most, and she would be checkmated.
Tibor moved a pawn on his own board forward. But when the Turk carried out the same move, it knocked a piece over. Tibor could hear it quite clearly. There had been a piece on the square that he had thought was empty. The Empress’s bishop. So she hadn’t moved it back after all. Tibor put his pawn down.
‘What’s this?’ asked the Emperor Joseph. ‘Is the automaton making mistakes?’
Tibor had to cancel the move, and Kempelen would stand the red bishop up again. He reached for the pantograph, and in so doing knocked several of his chessmen over. One rolled off the board and fell to the wooden floor of the cabinet with a sound that seemed to Tibor so loud he thought everyone must hear it. The pantograph couldn’t pick up the pawn on the board above. Tibor tried again. At the second attempt he succeeded. He moved the pawn back, but now he had no idea what to do next. He moved a pawn at the side of the board one square forward – a completely pointless move, but at least not incorrect. He sensed the confusion of the audience, but he mustn’t let that distract him. He had to reconstruct the state of play as quickly as he could. There was total chaos on his own board. By feel, Tibor could tell that several figures were lying down, sometimes two of them sharing a square, one had disappeared entirely, and even with the help of the metal discs it would be impossible for him to restore the state of the game now. Maria Theresia made her move, and a little metal disc clinked above him in the darkness, but it made no difference any more. Tibor was lost. All he could do was prevent this defeat from turning into a complete catastrophe, for the clockwork was still going round, rattling, as if the Turk were actively thinking. Tibor had to stop the mechanism. He picked up a chessman and pushed it between two cogwheels. There was a brief crunch and then the clockwork stopped.
Neither Kempelen nor Jakob realized that it had come to a halt because Tibor had stopped it, not because the mainsprings had run down. Jakob wound it up again. But the chessman stayed put, the wheels stood still.
‘What now?’ asked the Empress, her voice increasingly stern.
‘Un moment,’ said Kempelen. ‘I’ll look into this.’
He opened the door at the back, and the sudden bright light made Tibor blink. Like steam escaping from a pan when the lid is taken off, some of the heat evaporated from the automaton, letting in a breath of cooler air. The two men looked into each other’s eyes. Tibor admired Kempelen’s ability to remain self-possessed and sure of himself even in this situation. He just shook his head, and Kempelen immediately closed the door again.
‘Congratulations, Your Majesty,’ said Kempelen. ‘The victory is yours, for unfortunately I fear that my Turk must retire from the game. It has suffered damage on account of the heat, and sad to say, the repairs will take some time.’
‘We have won?’ inquired Maria Theresia.
‘Yes, and thus Your Majesty is the first opponent to beat my chess automaton. I could have wished for none worthier. Applause!’
But only a few of the spectators complied with Kempelen’s request. There was general confusion.
The Empress expressed the criticism felt by all present. ‘A victory won too easily against the greatest invention of the century. I would rather have lost than win in such a way.’
‘Oh, I shall insist on a return match, of course,’ replied Kempelen, and now his voice was shaking a very little.
‘Against a damaged machine?’
‘I’ll have repaired the damage by tomorrow; it’s only a bagatelle, and then we can repeat the game, or resume from the present state of play.’
‘We are going to Salzburg tomorrow.’
‘Then I will await your return, and we…’
‘No, you will not.’
‘But for me it’s…’
‘Perhaps we will visit Pressburg again some time.’ The Empress rose from her chair, and she was no longer acting the part of an old woman. ‘We like Pressburg. Adieu until then, Herr von Kempelen.’
Kempelen was going to say something else, but thought better of it and bowed, smiling. As he glanced down at the gravel on the ground, he noticed that a slight breeze had risen and was cooling his sweating face. When he looked up again, the Empress had already moved away. The spectators were drawing aside to let her pass. Most of them were looking at Kempelen as he watched the Empress, just as his creation the Turk beside him was watching her. Kempelen turned to Jakob and said something non-committal, if only to avoid those glances. He went on smiling as if the performance that had just failed really was no more than a bagatelle that did not trouble him further. Jakob’s expression was not so well controlled until Kempelen hissed at him, ‘Contenance.’
Clouds came between earth and sky. When Kempelen turned again, most of the audience had dispersed. The majority had followed the Empress into the palace. Joseph and von Haugwitz were continuing their conversation as if the chess automaton had been only an uninteresting and indeed annoying interruption. The footmen were clearing away the chairs and refreshments. No one wanted to talk to Kempelen – except for Friedrich Knaus, who had not moved from the spot and was now facing him, hands clasped behind his back and head slightly bent, the very image of attentive respect. With measured steps, almost at a leisurely stroll, he went up to the cabinet and looked at the Turk with a smile.
‘Ah, yes, the heat,’ he said, and tapped his knuckles on the table-top significantly, as if he knew what was underneath it. ‘I’ve noticed that clocks do run a little more slowly in extreme heat. But as for stopping – oh no, they never stop.’
‘Can I help you in some way?’ asked Kempelen.
‘Help me? Oh, no, my dear sir, I don’t need help. But perhaps you do? I have an excellent workshop in the city, and if you should wish to repair your… er, machine, you will be very welcome there. I will assist you with my tools and my modest knowledge of mechanics, if you like. Out of friendship, so to speak, friendship between brothers in the same craft.’
‘Thank you. That won’t be necessary.’
Knaus nodded to Kempelen, and to Jakob too. He was preparing to go when he turned again, put a finger to his lips and smiled. Then he allowed Kempelen to share his amusement. ‘Do you know what His Imperial Majesty said of our automata just now? He said they were relics of a bygone time, dusty toys from the days before the war, and it would be better to put money and energy into more sensible inventions. Think of that: only yesterday still avant garde, today antiquite. If he weren’t the Emperor, I would have argued with him passionately.’
He left the garden at a leisurely pace, his feet dragging over the gravel, and on the way he took the time to bend down to a bush of white roses and smell the flowers. Kempelen, Jakob and the machine were left on their own. Not even Jakob dared to say anything.
The sky had quickly grown grey over the city, but the rain kept everyone waiting. They just had time to get back to Kempelen’s apartment before the storm broke. When Tibor climbed out of the automaton at last – hungry, thirsty and stinking of dried sweat – Kempelen was standing at the window with his back to him. Tibor took the glass of water that Jakob handed him only after explaining to Kempelen the series of unfortunate circumstances that had led to his failure.
Kempelen asked no questions, did not nod, looked at Tibor only when he had finished and then said briefly, ‘You weren’t playing particularly well before it happened either.’
Tibor went away to wash, and while he was washing, his sense of guilt changed to annoyance. After all, he had done everything humanly possible to bring the game to a successful conclusion. It had been Kempelen who allowed the Empress to sit at the chess machine itself, and it had been Kempelen who didn’t relight his candle as they had agreed. And when Tibor took off the stained bandage that stuck to his skin as if it had grown into it and saw his wound, now surrounded by an angry red ring, he reminded himself that it was Kempelen who had not prevented andrássy from firing the shot, who had failed to protect him as he promised he would.
As soon as Jakob had rebandaged Tibor’s chest, he went out with a coat over his arm. Kempelen told him to stay, but Jakob said there was no more for him to do here, so he might as well take a look at the city. After all, he said, he had a right to some free time. When Kempelen repeated his command more firmly, Jakob replied, ‘I’m happy to be persuaded, but I won’t be ordered about.’ He obviously felt that the atmosphere in Kempelen’s apartment was intolerable, and even preferred to brave the hail that had begun beating down on the Alser Gasse outside. Tibor would have been only too happy to go with him.
